In conjunction with Shaping conflicts Inhabiting Urbanized Space
A multidisciplinary conference organized by CUNY Center for Cultural
Studies
The Autonomedia collective & The Research Institute for Experimental
Architecture

This exhibition attempts to explore and redefine the notion of
incompleteness in
its diverse modes. Completeness implies closure in time and space,
function and
form. With the incomplete something is obviously missing. What is
incomplete may
altogether lack a direction, end, goal or purpose. The incomplete is what
is
indeterminate or underdetermined. From the standpoint of security and
surveillance,
the obscure or imperceptible marks an incompleteness, a restriction of the
gaze at
the limit of what is visible. In the urban context, the structures and
spaces that
are unproductive or inefficient are proclaimed incomplete, dysfunctional,
degraded.
What is missing may be construed negatively as lack. In this exhibition,
the notion
of incompleteness is addressed positively as potential, as power and
capacity The
incomplete does not fix the possible. Rather, it grants the indeterminate
a space.

Ming-Dye Yan's silkscreen prints are abstract landscapes of delicate
articulations, smooth
spaces and sharp jagged ridges. Lou Heldens invents an
insignificant
alphabet, a
simulated language of indeterminate computer symbols publicly displayed
for persons
in transit. Three large ceramic and steel panels from his permanent
installation at
the Hortustunnel in Amsterdam are part of the exhibition, as well
as an
electronic
billboard displaying random messages. These meaningless "news flashes"
create a moment
of meaninful disruption that generate pure communication.

Two series of architectural models by Lebbeus Woods are included in
the
show. The
Horizon Houses, in collaboration with Paul Anvar, are
defined
through a
folding of
planes and trajectories. They are mobile structures for inhabiting
shifting and
unpredictable borderlands. For the Reconstructed Boxes, in
collaboration
with Dwayne
Oyler, the starting point is a set of rectilinear boxes - pure forms,
perfect and
complete. Reconstruction operates here as geometrical invagination -boxes
reconstructed
from within. In each series, the models are not forms to be imitated or
reproduced
but places for an encounter, places to think. Dolores Zinny & Juan
Maidagan also
address the notion of incompleteness through the materiality of three
dimensional
structures The Flea (a game of arbitrary decisions) is a series of
sculptural shapes
made of white paper and cardboard cuttings.

The work presented in Max Goldfarb's videos is the extention of a
drawing
project
that has evolved out of the studio to a performance arena: the street.
Challenging
conception of urban space and the peremptory codes of uniform by turning
the visual
language of public order against itself, Max Goldfarb uses an industrial
line striping
machine (which is commonly used for laying out parking lots and road
demarcations) as
a way of changing scale Road cones, barricades and other construction
paphernalia are
his props. The lines of order and of what is present are rewritten as he
draws in the
street (as well as on the gallery floor) the floor plans of buildings
never built.